The Scottish accent is the best for soothing people to sleep

A new poll has found the Scottish accent is the best for soothing people to sleep

Published:10:05Updated:10:30Wednesday 02 March 2016

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A new poll has found that the Scottish accent is the best for soothing us to sleep.

You may think reading your child a bedtime story will do the trick, but new research has discovered that it’s all in the tone.

Research by supermarket retailer Asda has found a staggering 87 per cent of Brits claim accents (62 per cent) and tone of voice (51 per cent) impact engagement and interest in a bedtime story.

And in particular, a Scottish accent (15 per cent) and a baritone or husky voice (27 per cent) is the key to the land of nod for children.

To celebrate World Book Day last week Asda revealed that deep, dulcet Scottish tones are paramount to bedtime bliss.

Scottish personalities Gerald Butler and Lorraine Kelly come in the top 10 list of people we’d most like to read us a bedtime story and high-pitched Alan Carr is everyone’s bedtime nightmare.

Results showed that listeners prefer to be read to by a male rather than a female voice, with seven male celebrities topping the charts for the most loved voices and six female celebrities landing the least favourite spots.

Good pronunciation (38 per cent) and an Scottish accent (34 per cent) were also appealing to us as a nation, with a good husky voice (12 per cent), and a slow reading voice (25 per cent), all contributing to the perfect recipe for the bedtime story.

When it comes to reading habits across the nation, a staggering 25 per cent of Scottish adults say that they’d love to be read a bedtime story each night, with almost five per cent preferring to listen to an audio book over physically reading themselves.

When it comes to reading with their children, 38 per cent of Scottish parents read their child a story every single night, with 30 per cent saying that this is far more often than when they were read to as a child by their own parents.

Today’s parents are also getting more interactive during the routine bedtime story – six per cent of Scottish parents parents say that they occasionally don fancy dress to get into character and capture their child’s imagination as well as adopt the character voices to make listening more enjoyable.

When it comes to kids’ experiences, 47 per cent of children in Scotland will enjoy a book so much that they it can be read multiple times to them, they fall asleep on average just ten minutes after the bedtime story has started. When it comes to reading themselves, 10 per cent of children practice reading to their family pet feeling more confident with attempting new words without criticism or embarrassment.

An Asda’s book buyer said: “Most of us have fond memories of being read to while we drift off to sleep and for many there’s one person that stands out as the best reader be it Mum, Dad, a teacher or another family member.